Links
Right, here goes...
My real name is Kieron Thwaites, but a lot of my friends call me Ron for short - hence "Ron2K", the alias by which I'm known online. I'm not going to tell you how old I am for one fairly obvious reason - every year, that information becomes outdated. So I'll give you my birthday (21 January 1985) and you can work out the rest.
if (month == "January" &&
day < 21)
{
send_Ron_nice_presents();
}
I live in Durban, South Africa. Spent almost all of my life there, the only exceptions being living in Pretoria when I was one year old (so I've been told anyway, I obviously don't remember it so I'm really not too sure), and spending 2003 in Cape Town.
I currently work as a software developer for AAT. Programming is my main thing. I've had quite a history with it; it started when I was around ten years old when my dad brought me Turbo Pascal for me to play around with. Very soon I could write simple programs in it. As I was taught this language at school, I became quite good at it. Just please don't ask me to write a Pascal program now; I'm very rusty at it and besides, with a language like C++ at my disposal, I wouldn't want to go back to it anyway. After school, I didn't touch any code for a good few years while I was studying actuarial science at UCT. That was completely the wrong thing to do - I was far more interested in mantaining our residence website than the course material. By the way, it obviously hasn't been updated since - last time I checked (October 2006), my photo was still on it. :P
After a few months dabbling in VB .NET (which got me interested in programming again, but I really detested the language itself), I started studying at CTI in 2005, and did C# as my programming language. This was the first language that I'd done that I felt that I could do some really useful stuff with. I then did a brief introduction to Java, and liked that too. CTI then decided to employ me in early 2006 (mainly because I finished my course with an 87% average) and I started doing the C++ course, which has now become my language of preference. I was then approached by AAT's CEO after one of the senior programmers there discovered my blog, and the rest is history.
I would like to learn some PHP and some Python. Yes I know, part of this website is written in PHP, but most of it is jerith's code, and that's not counting the forums, for which I'm using phpBB. On the flip side of the coin though, I'm able to read PHP and understand it (to a certain extent), even if I'm not able to write it yet.
Moving right along from the coding... I'm one of the biggest computer gaming addicts around. My PC at home is built primarily for that purpose (Athlon X2 4400+, 2GB RAM, XFX GeForce 7950GX2), and it gets carried around to LANs all the time. The actual carrying bit is rather unpleasant (my system weighs a good 25kg) but the gaming itself is rather pleasant. There are two LANs that I regularly attend; I'm one of the admins for one of them. Check out the LANs page for more. This has developed me into somewhat of a networking expert. I'm particularly interested in wireless networks; I have one at home.
I'm also heavily involved in IRC. Not so much as time spent chatting (although I have ADSL, time constraints mean that I sit idle most of the time), but I'm involved in IRC server development. I'm one of about 20 beta testers for UnrealIRCd, which is probably the most popular IRC server out there, for all the small and medium sized networks at least. (Pay attention to all the connect info next time you connect to an IRC server and see what they're running.) I also sit on the mailing list for IRCServices, which is one of the NickServ, ChanServ, etc. packages. Indeed, on another of my sites I offer a Windows build of IRCServices (which is something that isn't supported by the developers, but a lot of people request it anyway, so I provide it).
Other than that, I'm keen on my cricket (I've worked as a professional paid cricket scorer at Kingsmead and still do so from time to time), and my music. I was quite into the cultural side of things at school (they gave me cultural honours in my final year) and I'm currently involved with a Christian youth band at my church. I'm told that I have an uncanny ability to listen to something and be able to play it on the keyboard almost instantly. Oh well, I suppose that having perfect pitch helps out there. I listen to trance music quite a lot and have experimented with some virtual DJing. I even had my own show on UCT Radio back in 2003, which was an incredible experience that I'll never forget.
If you think I should put some other information up on this page, let me know.